Fellhaneropsis
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| Fellhaneropsis | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Fungi |
| Division: | Ascomycota |
| Class: | Lecanoromycetes |
| Order: | Lecanorales |
| Family: | Ectolechiaceae |
| Genus: | Fellhaneropsis Sérus. & Coppins (1996) |
| Type species | |
| Fellhaneropsis myrtillicola (Erichsen) Sérus. & Coppins (1996) | |
Fellhaneropsis is a genus of lichen-forming fungi in the family Ectolechiaceae. The genus comprises 11 accepted species as of 2025. These inconspicuous lichens form extremely thin, smooth to powdery films that spread over bark, leaves, or other plant surfaces, and unlike their close relatives in Fellhanera, they produce no detectable lichen products.
Fellhaneropsis was circumscribed by Emmanuël Sérusiaux and Brian John Coppins in 1996, in a study of foliicolous (leaf-dwelling) lichens from Madeira. They introduced the genus to accommodate two species that had previously been placed in Bacidia: B. myrtillicola and B vezdae. Of these, F. myrtillicola was selected as the type species. In the original treatment, the authors regarded the new genus as closely allied to Fellhanera, but concluded that these species were distinct enough to justify separation at genus level.[1]
Sérusiaux and Coppins based that decision on a combination of microscopic characters. They described Fellhaneropsis as having an extremely thin, crust-like thallus without a cortex, small apothecia constricted at the base, and a thin but distinct tissue around the apothecium (the excipulum) made of elliptical to polyhedral cells arranged in upright rows rather than the more typical paraplectenchymatous tissue seen in Fellhanera. They also noted Byssoloma-type asci, long narrow ascospores divided by transverse septa, and distinctive pycnidia that produce long, thread-like, sigmoid conidia; in F. myrtillicola, a second type of shorter, rod-shaped (bacilliform) conidium is also present.[1]
The authors regarded those long threadlike (filiform) conidia as especially diagnostic, and suggested that the way the pycnidia appear to develop from spore-producing apothecia was a singular feature among the lichenized fungi known to them. On that basis, they treated Fellhaneropsis as a distinct genus rather than as part of Fellhanera sensu stricto, whose species have a typically paraplectenchymatous excipulum and bacilliform, ellipsoid, or pear-shaped conidia.[1] The genus was named in honour of the Austrian lichenologist Josef Hafellner.[2]